From left to right, director André Godoy of Finep, president of Anprotec, Francisco Saboya, president of Sebrae, Carlos Meles, Minister Paulo Alvim, center, president Waldemar Barroso, financial director of Finep, Adriano Lattarulo and Paulo Cabral, manager of Sebrae Innovation
Finep/MCTI and Sebrae have just launched the first Guarantor Fund, focused on Innovation in Brazil, FAMPE Inovacred. Built to guarantee Finep/MCTI's decentralized financing, the fund has an initial equity of R$ 160 million, R$ 80 million from Finep/MCTI and R$ 80 million from Sebrae.
The announcement was made at the opening of the 32nd Anprotec Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Environments, on December 5th, at the Salvador Convention Center - Bahia.
FAMPE (Fundo de Aval à Micro e Pequena Empresa) Inovacred will operate in a decentralized manner through financial agents and has the potential to change the reality of small innovative businesses in Brazil. As the Superintendent of the Credit Area at Finep, Miguel Haum, explains, surveys carried out by Finep/MCTI in partnership with Sebrae showed that more than 60,000 small businesses in the country seek to innovate in products and processes but have great difficulty in accessing credit, mainly due to the demand for the presentation of guarantees, the high costs charged by the market and the very lack of knowledge of the existing available mechanisms.
With that in mind, Finep/MCTI and Sebrae joined forces to enable thousands of innovative small businesses to have access to resources with low interest rates and longer payment terms, in order to boost Innovation in Brazil.
The great differential of FAMPE/Inovacred is allowing these small entrepreneurs to overcome one of their main challenges – the presentation of credit guarantees. Through the Fund, interested parties will be able to acquire the guarantee they need from Finep financial agents at a maximum concession cost of 5% of the operation. On the other hand, the Fund will cover up to 10% of defaults on operations (the so-called stop-loss). Companies with revenues of up to R$ 4.8 million will be supported, in projects of up to R$ 1.5 million. Transactions may have a term of up to 10 years.
All companies supported by the Fund can also be assisted by the Sebrae Assisted Credit Program.
Finep's president, Waldemar Barroso celebrated the launch, thanking the Financier's team, which he qualified as competent and committed to its institutional mission, for creating the Fund. “The minister gave us this challenge and today we are delivering a product to society. It is our contribution to improve the country's Innovation and Knowledge indexes and the lives of Brazilians”, he summarized.
Carlos Melles, president of Sebrae Nacional, compared the performance of Finep and Sebrae in supporting Innovation for small entrepreneurs to the duty of parents to provoke disruption to prepare their children for the world. “This agreement we signed with Finep is a courageous, auspicious innovation, we are looking for the conditions for you to take off. The best thing about Brazilians is the dream of entrepreneurship. We are saying that we believe in the dream, we believe in you, we believe in Innovation”, he concluded.
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The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Paulo Alvim, gave special thanks to the two partners who signed the agreement, Finep and Sebrae, which he defined as 'institutions that have always been on the side of those actors who work in Innovation environments.' For the minister, the Fund has the potential to change the level of financing for Innovation in Brazil by effectively guaranteeing access to credit for these small companies. He ended the launch by calling on incubators and technology parks to learn more about how FAMPE/Inovacred works and take advantage of its resources.
Also present at the ceremony were the president of Anprotec, Francisco Saboya, who presided over the ceremony, the Secretary of C&T of Bahia, André Juazeiro, the Financial, Credit and Innovation Director of Finep, Adriano Lattarulo, the Director of Innovation, Otávio Augusto Burgardt , the Director of Administration, André Godoy, among other authorities.
The Conference is the main event in the country dedicated to incubators, accelerators, technology parks and innovation hubs, organized by Anprotec – National Association of Entities and Sebrae – Brazilian Support Service for Micro and Small Companies.
